1:59am, Tue 1 Apr 2014
British Army sniper 'kills six with one shot'
A 20-year-old Army marksman killed six Taliban fighters with a single round when he shot the detonator of a suicide bomb vest, it has emerged.
The remarkable shot, made at a range of 850m (930-yards), was made by a lance corporal in the Coldstream Guards in Kakaran, southern Afghanistan, during December last year.
His bullet hit the detonator switch what appeared to be a suicide vest, killing the man and his five fellow insurgents instantly and preventing a serious attack on British forces in the area.
Lieutenant Colonel Richard Slack, commanding officer of the 9/12 Royal Lancers described what happened during the fire-fight, as British and Afghan troops engaged around 15 to 20 Taliban insurgents.
“The guy was wearing a vest. He was identified by the sniper moving down a tree line and coming up over a ditch. He had a shawl on. It rose up and the sniper saw he had a machine gun.
They were in contact and he was moving to a firing position. The sniper engaged him and the guy exploded.
There was a pause on the radio and the sniper said, 'I think I’ve just shot a suicide bomber’. The rest of them were killed in the blast.
A second suicide vest with 20kg (44lb) of explosives was found nearby.
It was also reported that earlier in his tour of duty, the same sniper had shot and killed a Taliban machine gunner at a range of 1,340m (1,465 yards).
There have been 448 British service personnel killed in Afghanistan since 2001 but the number of gun battles and injuries has reduced in recent tours as Afghan forces now lead almost all security operations in the country.
